Reality Bites: Alex Jones Learns About Defamation

Alex Jones, wacko conspiracy theorist only loosely in touch with reality, is starting to receive a schooling in the consequences of calling the parents of victims of the Sandy Hook mass shooting liars.

For more than five years now, Jones has claimed the December 2012 Sandy Hook shooting didn’t happen, that the parents of the victims are actors or liars, and that the whole thing is an attack on the Second Amendment. Some of those parents, most recently Veronique De La Rosa and Leonard Pozner, parents of first-grader Noah Pozner, have had more than enough of Jones’ deranged claims. They have hired Kaster, Lynch, a well-regarded Houston, Texas law firm, to pursue a defamation lawsuit against Jones and his companies.

The case has now been filed. The complaint is well-written, cites to the specific, sickening instances of Jones’ outrageous claims, and presents an expensive immediate problem for Jones, and long-term his potential ticket to bankruptcy court.

This is an expensive immediate problem for Jones because he is going to have to hire lawyers to defend himself. Or lose by default. Defense of a defamation case is a spendy proposition; WC guesses this will cost Jones more than a million bucks through trial. Maybe Jones’ collection of loonies at his website, InfoWars, generates enough revenue to buy such a defense, but WC doubts it. And good luck to Jones in finding a competent lawyer to take up the defense of his indefensible conduct for anything less than a seven-figure retainer.

But it’s an even bigger long term problem for the king of the conspiracy cons. Because he is going to lose this defamation case. Even if Jones sincerely believes the hateful, cruel lies he spews, that’s not a defense to a defamation claim. Jones has to prove his lies are true. He has to prove Sandy Hook didn’t happen. To a Houston, Texas jury. That means a very large damages award, including punitive damages, against Jones and his little empire of lies.

Damage awards arising out of intentional bad conduct can’t we washed off in bankruptcy. They are nondischargeable.

With any luck, Jones will never have two nickels to rub together again in his life. Again, it couldn’t happen to a more richly deserving alleged human being. No doubt Jones and his rationality-challenged followers will see yet another conspiracy against “the truth,” and no doubt the long-suffering parents of the Sandy Hook victims will receive still more death threats. But the intellectual sewage canal that is Jones and InfoWars will be shut down.

Donald Trump appeared on Jones’ show in December 2015, telling Jones afterward, “I just want to finish by saying your reputation’s amazing.” Says it all, really. ↩